A List With Nothing On It
by upsidedownbutterfly
Summary: Tory Foster may have had a very short list of people she cared about but she cared about them fiercely.


Title: A List With Nothing On It  
>Author: upsidedownbutterfly<br>Summary: Tory Foster may have had a very short list of people she cared about but she cared about them fiercely.  
>Rating: PG<br>Spoilers: Through season 4.5.  
>Disclaimer: They're not mine, people.<br>Author's Note: Tory is one of the _Battlestar Galactica _characters with whom I identify the most. This is my attempt to explain why.

* * *

><p>It was early in her life that Tory Foster got used to being called cold. She heard it from her classmates at Libran Colonial University whenever she declined the requests to join in their latest protest against the violence on Sagittaron. Later she heard it from the petitioners that crowded her tiny office in the Libran capitol building in Themis begging for drought relief for Aerilon or aid in fighting brushfires on Leonis.<p>

Personally, Tory liked to think of herself as practical. There were more than twelve billion people living on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, and as far Tory was concerned it was simply infeasible that she should care about all of them.

However that didn't mean she didn't care about _some_of them. After all not caring about everyone is not the same as not caring about anyone. There were certainly people that Tory cared for.

And she cared for them fiercely. When her sister Sarah failed her driver's test for the third time, Tory accessed the motor vehicle commission records from her office computer and fudged the results. And when her brother Jordan was arrested for possession of controlled substances the next year, Tory pulled every string she had to make the charges vanish.

Tory Foster may have had a very short list of people she cared about but for those few people, she would do pretty much anything.

_David Foster_  
><em>Julia Foster<em>_  
><em>_Sarah Foster__  
><em>_Jordan Foster_

Tory had already moved to Caprica when faulty electrical wiring caused the fire that killed her entire family while they slept. Their funerals were the last time that Tory set foot on Libran. There was no one left there that she cared about.

There was no one left anywhere that she cared about.

Three months later, Tory started her latest job at the Delphi municipal building and met Lili Baines. Lili shared Tory's sense of humor and her passion for government, and it only took about two weeks for her to be the best friend Tory had ever had.

The next year Tory landed a new job in Caprica City, a coveted position in the mayor's office that was as big a step up from Delphi as Delphi had been over Themis. So when another job in the office opened up a few months later, Tory made certain that HR accidentally misplaced every application except for that of one Lili Baines.

Lili had been angry when Tory told her what she'd done, one night after too many cocktails, pointing out that it was unfair to the other applicants.

Except Tory didn't care about the other applicants like she cared about Lili. Fair or unfair, it didn't matter to her.

_Lili Baines_

Lili died in the cylon holocaust along with most of the rest of the twelve billion people Tory didn't care about. Tory had spent days staring numbly at the ceiling above her make-shift hospital bed aboard the _Rising Star_. All around her echoed the screams and sobs of people mourning the Twelve Colonies, but the only thing Tory mourned was Lili.

She never did figure out how word of her pre-holocaust job made it around to Roslin's people, but by the time Tory's injuries had healed, they were already seeking to bring her into the administration's fold. She'd been skeptical about the new president at first, maybe even more so than the rest of the fleet. Tory had spent the better part of her adult life as a civil servant, and she knew firsthand how bad of politicians_politicians_made, let alone kindergarten teachers.

Before the first week was out however, Tory knew that she'd been wrong to doubt. Roslin's singular combination of intellect, poise, and steely resolve won Tory's instantaneous respect, admiration, and intense devotion.

Of course the end of the world meant that everything came with higher stakes, that protecting the people Tory cared about would require more of her than doctored records and stolen résumés.

However it was only the scale of the necessary deeds – not the principle behind them – that had changed. So when the cylon baby was born, when it looked like Baltar was going to win the election, Tory did without hesitation everything that her president needed of her.

After all, it was Roslin she cared about – not Karl Agathon or his cylon girlfriend and certainly not Gaius frakking Baltar.

_Laura Roslin_

Tory had never particularly liked Saul Tigh and prior to the Ionian Nebula would have only claimed to know Galen Tyrol and Samuel Anders in passing. But that day in the abandoned _Galactica_ gym and the revelation that passed between them bound the four of them together irrevocably.

They were in this together now, like them or not. It would be the four of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the airlock if this secret of theirs failed to keep.

So when Tory saw that loose panel outside of weapons locker 1701D and realized that it had been Cally who followed them, Cally who had seen them, Tory knew what she would have to do. It was the same thing she always did really: everything necessary to protect the people she cared about.

She found Cally in the launch tube, sobbing and clutching her son, and for a moment Tory considered walking away and simply allowing the other woman to go through with her suicide. But even if Tory didn't care about Cally, she did care about _Galen_, and even if Cally's death was inevitable, Nicky's was not. Tory couldn't save Galen's wife, but she could save his son.

So she grabbed the boy and pushed the button, and for the moment, the people she cared about were safe once again.

_Laura Roslin__  
><em>_Saul Tigh__  
><em>_Galen Tyrol__  
><em>_Sam Anders_

It was Tigh's idea that sent her to Baltar in the first place – an attempt to discover if Baltar knew who the fifth cylon was, if Baltar knew who _they_were. The plan had repulsed her at first – this was Gaius Baltar after all – but Tigh's logic was sound and as always Tory would do whatever she needed to protect the people she cared about.

So she had gone for the Four. But, as perverse as the president would have found it, it was Roslin that she stayed for.

_Perfect_, Baltar whispered in her ear as he lay beside her, _you are perfect_. And for tiny fleeting moments, Tory could almost believe him, could almost believe that this was who she was supposed to be.

Because Tory wasn't foolish enough to believe that her secret would keep forever. One day, she knew, Laura would look at her and finally see Tory as the cylon she was, and the thought of the disappointment that would darken her eyes was more terrifying than any airlock.

Only maybe, just maybe, if Tory could actually, really, _truly_ believe that she was as perfect as Baltar said just the way she was, then she could make Laura believe it too.

_I did it for you_, Tory wanted to say, when Laura finally confronted her about the affair. But she couldn't, not without risking the others. She could only sit silent and helpless as Laura shut her out. Maybe disappointing her had been inevitable.

_Saul Tigh__  
><em>_Galen Tyrol__  
><em>_Sam Anders_

The humans hate her, Tory knows. She can feel the disgust in their eyes and can practically read the names – _toaster, traitor_– that they call her silently on their lips. But Tory doesn't care about any of them anyway so she certainly doesn't care about what they think.

Let the humans, let _Roslin_, hate her. Tory still has the rest of the Four. They understand. They are all in this together, after all.

Except that they don't understand, or at least Tigh doesn't. His insistence on pretending to be human nearly rivals Sharon Agathon's in its fanaticism. And no matter how many times Tory begs him to see that they can be something better, greater, _more_ than any human, the deluded old fool refuses to see reason. Soon he's looking at her with the same expression of veiled distaste that she sees in his beloved Bill Adama's eyes. He'd probably be proud to know that if nothing else, he judges her like a human.

Galen, she thinks, would be on her side. Only she and Galen haven't properly talked since the days after Cally's death, the girl's ghost steadily forging an increasingly unbridgeable rift between them. Even without knowing the truth, the mistaken belief that it was their supposed affair that drove Cally to suicide is enough to pull Galen away.

And then there was Sam. Sam who had left her, left them all, without a moment's thought to run off on Starbuck's crazy mission to find Earth and returned just in time to catch a bullet in his brain.

Tory had always had a very short list of people she cared about, and now suddenly she's finding that it's very short indeed. It's different this time than after the fire and after the Fall, because this time the people she cared about had _chosen_ to leave her. They had looked at what Tory was holding out for them – which had been everything – and walked away, and Tory can't help but feel foolish for ever offering it in the first place.

But Tory Foster is a practical person and she learns from her mistakes, and so this is a mistake she won't make again.

_It's freedom_, she tells herself as she walks alone through the baseship's softly glowing halls. Mostly though it feels like emptiness.


End file.
